LEVER WEEKLY: Undistorted Election Discourse

This is Lever Weekly, a recap of our work from the past week. If you only read one email from us all week, this should be it.

Below you will find a breakdown of our reporting, podcasts, videos, and live events — a feature now open to all subscribers. Following that, we are providing paid subscribers with an original column, written by a member of The Lever, connecting the dots on our coverage to deliver important takeaways.

In this week’s column, exclusively for paid subscribers, David Sirota and Aditi Ramaswami reflect upon The Lever’s ethos and the urgency of building independent media to disrupt corporate narratives, especially in the wake of this week’s seismic midterm elections.

Stuff The Lever Reported This Week:

• PA’s Next Governor: The Democrat Who Picks Fights With Bad Guys — “Josh Shapiro is a Ted Lasso-style politician who does the one thing most Dems never do: He names the villains.”

• Eight Key Midterm Election Takeaways: The Progressive Electorate Has Spoken — “We constantly hear about how progressives are too extreme; Tuesday’s results should quash that narrative.”

• The REAL Reason For Dems’ Rust Belt Revival — Political analyst Krystal Ball on why Democrats overperformed in the industrial Midwest — and how it could pave the way for transformational policy that challenges corporate power.

• The Midterm Issue No One’s Talking About — “As voters push to prioritize climate change and fossil fuels spend big on key races, less than one percent of election ads are focused on the environment.”

• The Lever’s Guide To The 2022 Midterms — “A look back at the blockbuster reporting we produced this election season.”

• YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: Working People’s Issues Won On Election Night — “Across the country, ballot measures and new candidates delivered midterm victories for economic justice and workers’ rights.”

Stuff To Watch & Listen To:

• LEVER TIME: The Midterm Shellacking That Never Was (w/ Krystal Ball) — The Lever’s reporters run through the midterm election results and David speaks with Krystal Ball about big-picture takeaways.

• LEVER TIME PREMIUM: The Former U.S. Senator Who Became A Saudi Lobbyist — David explores how a former U.S. Senator became a lobbyist for the Saudi Arabian government.

• THE AUDIT: Prioritize The Painters — The study group FINALLY finishes George W. Bush’s MasterClass on leadership.

• Donald Trump’s Disastrous Night (The Owen Jones Show) — David joins British columnist and media analyst Owen to break down how the elections will affect the right.

Undistorted Election Discourse

Buried in Fox News’ national exit poll from this past week’s midterm election, one stat sticks out: Less than one in five Americans now say they have a great deal or a lot of “trust and confidence… in the news media when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly.”

You can see that distrust expressed in another part of the poll that explains much about why the media-predicted red wave never materialized: As The Lever showed in our post-election analysis, a whopping 46 percent of voters rejected the media-created argument that the Biden administration’s spending policies — not corporate profiteering — is to blame for the inflation crisis.